For those of you still looking for guidance in how to vote, here’s a round-up of endorsements and/or information bulletins that I’ve been sent by various groups or that I’ve run across. (Please feel free to add your own in the comments.)

Fair Tax Coalition: Sent out a message to its members noting who was in favour of continuing a tax shift from business to residential for the next three years. Vision has said it is only in favour of continuing the tax shift for one more year and then re-assessing. Those in favour of the three-year shift, according to the tax coalition were: All of the NPA council team and Adriane Carr, along with three independents.

Vancouver and District Labour Council: The straight Vision/COPE slate.

Firefighters: As reported previously, mostly Vision/COPE (see previous posts) except for the Green Party’s Adriane Carr and NPA’s Sean Bickerton.

Green Party of B.C.: President Jane Sterk said the party is endorsing only the three Green Party candidates (one each at council, school board and parks). Her comment about former Green Party president Christopher Ian Bennett endorsing NPA’er Suzanne Anton is that Bennett only trots out his Green Party credentials, a six-month stint that he quickly dropped, when he is endorsing B.C. Liberals. Mr. Bennett also endorsed NPA mayoral candidate Sam Sullivan in 2005.

Citycaucus.com. The three-year-old political blog that has been mostly focused on anti-Vision coverage (with very occasional NPA critiques) but also comments on the region from time to time. It has the most comprehensive list of anyone, only rivalled by the Canadian Union of Public Employees in its geographic coverage. Vancouver recommendation’s are mostly NPA, with two Vision (Tim Stevenson and Heather Deal) and Green Party Adriane Carr, who’s scoring a lot of endorsements from the right in this election.

The Mainlander: An online publication that I would define as the intellectual clearing house for the Beyond New Left of Vancouver, which includes those who represent a hardcore element at Occupy Vancouver and who dismiss parties like Vision Vancouver as little different from the Non-Partisan Association. Their ratings are here.

Mainstream media: Vancouver Sun did not endorse anyone. Globe endorsed Vision Vancouver’s Gregor Robertson, but said council needs a stronger opposition.

The Georgia Straight: Here. Lengthy explanations that I can’t summarize easily, but Robertson for mayor, with a mix of COPE, Vision, NPA, NSV, and independent.

Michael Geller: Former NPA council candidate and political commentator, here. Also a mix, including Geoff Meggs from Vision, Sean Bickerton and Mike Klassen from the NPA, and independent Sandy Garossino.

Finally , Tony Tang (running with Vision and whom I inadvertently left off my list today as someone to consider because of his years of community and work with the party) got this particularly lovely endorsement from his Kerrisdale neighbour Bob McGilvray:

Everyone uses a different value system and set of criteria to decide who they want to vote for. I wouldn’t presume to give people a list of “best” candidates, because my best will never match your best. I’m not endorsing anyone either.

Some people are going to vote straight Non-Partisan Association or straight Vision/COPE slate because they know what those parties are offering and they want to make sure there’s a majority elected to ensure the party can carry out what it promised.

They don’t need my help or anyone’s.

Nor does anyone need my help deciding on whether to vote for Gregor Robertson or Suzanne Anton. They’ve had ample coverage and everyone who’s planning to vote has a sense of their leadership style by now.

This list is more for others who are considering not voting straight slate but are still confused about those beyond Robertson and Anton.

So here is my very idiosyncratic, sometimes frivolous, occasionally crabby guide, to the candidates so that you can mix and match (or not) according to what it is you’re looking for.

YOU WANT TO REGISTER A PROTEST VOTE AGAINST DEVELOPMENT

You’re mad about a big new project planned for your neighbourhood, you’re mad about the way the city just seems to be getting busier and more crowded all the time, and you feel like developers control everyone on council.

You want to punish Vision/COPE for having brought the latest round of development to the city, but you don’t want to vote for the right-wing NPA. (They’re just as bad, n’est-ce pas?)

You probably won’t elect anyone, but your protest vote will be visible, may result in some Vision councillors not getting elected, and will perhaps act as a caution to future councils that they need to spend more time working with neighbourhood groups. (Or maybe not. Other parties that have run on a slow-growth or anti-development theme in the past have only netted about 8,000 votes, not enough to make anyone change course visibly.)

You’re less concerned about the fact that the people you’re voting for yet developed a very precise plan about how thousands of new people will be absorbed in the city while they are consulting extensively with neighbourhoods on how to bring in density that won’t bother anyone.

Mayor: Randy Helten, who rallied the West End to object to new towers planned for the area and has since carried that campaigns for improved citizen participation, better planning, bans on developer contributions in elections, and a region-wide fight against Metro Vancouver’s growth strategy. Running with a group called Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver.

Councillors: Elizabeth Murphy (NSV), Nicole Benson (NSV), Marie Kerchum (NSV), Terry Martin (NSV), Adriane Carr (Green), Tim Louis (COPE)

(Helten’s group has also endorsed Louis and the other two COPE candidates, RJ Aquino and Ellen Woodsworth, independent Sandy Garossino, and NPA candidate Bill McCreery, but all of those people, with the exception of Louis, are likely to be slightly more nuanced in their approach to development.)

YOU’RE LOOKING FOR A CONTRARIAN PITBULL

COPE’s Tim Louis, the NPA’s Mike Klassen, and NSV’s Randy Helten are your men. All are political WWF contenders, who have no hesitation in taking out the enemy – even if, occasionally, the enemy is on their own team. Tim Louis has been involved in COPE politics forever and was bitterly opposed to the peeling off of some COPE members to form the new Vision party. He’s maintained radio silence about Vision during the campaign, but don’t expect that if he’s elected. Klassen brought a new kind of attack politics to Vancouver with his CityCaucus blog (co-written with Daniel Fontaine) and it would be fascinating to see if he can turn his pitbull instincts to good use at council. Unlike Louis, who has a pretty straightforward leftwing agenda that he’s stuck to for decades, Klassen hasn’t made it clear what he’d fight FOR besides the right to go after his opponents. (Better planning, nicer neighbourhoods isn’t really an agenda.) But maybe the three years will give him a chance to develop one. And Helten has shown himself to be relentless in pursuing his idea of how the city should be run. God help the person who disagrees with him, even about comma placement.

IF I’M GOING TO VOTE RIGHT, DANGIT, I WANT RICH PEOPLE FROM THE WEST SIDE WHO DRIVE SUVs

Sorry, I have no one to recommend. A few live on the west side — Suzanne Anton, Ken Charko and Elizabeth Ball – but none are corporate fatcats.

GREEN-COLOURED GLASSES

Saving Planet Earth takes precedence over almost anything else in your life? Andrea Reimer, Heather Deal from Vision Vancouver; Adrianne Carr from the Green Party.

SUSPICIOUS OF NEW-AGE GREENIES, PREFER OLD-STYLE LEFTIES BUT ONLY THOSE WHO HAVE A CHANCE OF BEING ELECTED

In descending order of leftiness: Tim Louis, Ellen Woodsworth, RJ Aquino from COPE; Raymond Louie, Kerry Jang, Geoff Meggs from Vision (though Geoff’s on the cusp, with all his bike-riding these days).

CANDIDATES WHO HAVE WORKED HARD FOR THE CITY AND THEIR COMUNITIES

Aha, here we are. The serious category.

Okay, this is where my biases kick in. First off, yes, I tend to judge based on what I see people doing on the public stage: at council, in news coverage, in their tweets and blogs. But I don’t think that’s the worst bias to have. People who are going to be on council need to demonstrate they can communicate who they are and what they’re doing.

Second, I like candidates who take stands, even if they’re unpopular, and don’t just repeat their party’s policies like a bunch of Occupiers doing mic checks.

Third, I tend to favour people who have demonstrated over more than just a period of two months that they have an interest in the city. I wouldn’t hire someone as a babysitter or carpenter just because they showed up at my door, looking eager and promising to learn what they’re supposed to do on the job.

Councillors manage a billion-dollar budget and have to balance the desires and financial constraints of 650,000 different people. In my years of watching council, what I see happen when newbies get elected is they get led around the nose by two groups: city staff or the most forceful member of their party.

I just don’t feel good about electing someone to the difficult task of making decisions on my behalf if they haven’t spent any time learning about the city or council or at least their neighbourhood. Or if they seem only half-interested in the job.

That’s why I can’t bring myself to recommend people like Tim Stevenson from Vision Vancouver, who seems to have lost interest in council the past three years. (I would have said the same about COPE’s David Cadman, but COPE members already did that job for me.)

Or candidates like George Affleck, Joe Carangi, Ken Charko, and Jason Lamarche from the NPA, who all seem like nice enough people but who didn’t show up at city hall until last month or even appear at a community meeting. While some, like Carangi and Charko, have campaigned hard, I don’t get any sense, from talking to them about what they’d like to accomplish as councillors, that they know much about how city hall actually works. Affleck seems to have just coasted along, with nothing more than retweets from NPA head office, and Lamarche did not distinguish himself in this campaign.

Similarly, Adrianne Carr from the Green Party has not spent any time I know of getting involved in local city issues. She seems to have jumped at the last minute onto the anti-Vision, anti-development bandwagon that Randy Helten drove out of the barn long ago. The only things I’ve heard her talk about are the need to develop better neighbourhood consultation for development and the possibility of banning bikes on certain arterials.

As I noted above, you might want to consider (depending on your politics!) one or more of the three candidates I listed above as the strong offensive linemen: Mike Klassen, Tim Louis, and Randy Helten. Like the following people I’ve listed here, they have learned a lot about the city and aren’t afraid to take stands. They do tend to be strong partisans, though, and haven’t shown so far a huge interest in talking much with people who don’t agree with them. That could change, especially with Klassen if he wants to move on in politics.  He did tone down his style during the campaign.

But in a different category, the following councillors have impressed me with the hours they’re willing to put in and their openness to talking to everyone, not just those who have the same mindset. You may not agree with their views. I certainly don’t, in all cases. But if hard work means more to you than party labels, you may want to consider these people first.

Geoff Meggs. Vision Vancouver. If Meggs doesn’t get re-elected to council, it will be Vancouver’s loss. The former chief of staff to Larry Campbell has thrown himself into this job with an energy I haven’t seen on council in a long time. He spends hours researching the main issues, goes out and talks directly to people who are affected by council decisions, and is always prepared to give his opinions so that reporters and the public know where he stands – which has been less true of some other Vision council members. He’s smart, quick-thinking, and, though obviously has an ideological framework he works from, is always listening. He’s sometimes pegged by people on the right as the “real mayor” who’s controlling everything at city hall, but in fact he’s kind of outside of the mayor’s inner circle and that shows in his willingness to take stands, even when the going gets tough. And it’s not just me who feels this way. Former NPA candidate Michael Geller has recommended him too.

Sean Bickerton. NPA. After coming in second-last in the 2008 election, Sean worked hard to help rebuild the party and to develop and explain his points of view on city-hall issues. He’s got a strong arts and culture background, but he’s also spent a lot of time in his Crosstown (between Gastown and Chinatown by Rogers arena) neighbourhood working to improve that. He’s come out in favour of looking at re-purposing the viaducts, he worked with anti-casino crusader Sandy Garossino on opposing the casino expansion, has been active in the False Creek Residents Association, and he’s shown that he can maintain civility under attack in any issue he’s involved in.

Sandy Garossino. Independent.  I thought Sandy was sometimes over the top in her anti-casino arguments, but I couldn’t doubt the effort and time she was putting in. Since she announced her decision to run for council, she’s consistently put out statements and tweets that show she takes thoughtful stands on contentious issues but she’s not a wimp. She’s advocated looking at the idea of controls on speculation and foreign ownership, which neither Vision or the NPA will touch with a 10-foot pole. She maintained her cool about the Occupy camp, when people were screaming their heads off. And she’s nice to everyone.

Andrea Reimer. Vision Vancouver. Andrea can sometimes come across as the smartest girl in the room and who knows it, but she does her homework diligently, competing with Raymond Louie for time logged on reading dense city reports. She’s a big proponent of opening up city data streams to the public (something that hasn’t paid off hugely so far, but will some day if they keep going) and is the most active member of council in communicating out through Twitter what she and council are doing. A big leader in driving the city’s environmental issues and rounding up public support at Metro Vancouver for issues like alternatives to the garbage incinerator.

Ellen Woodsworth. COPE. She comes across to some as hopelessly mired in naïve 1960s idealism, but Ellen fights hard for what she believes in and is willing to go out and take the flak for it. She worked doggedly with groups in the West End and Marpole to help them push back on unwanted projects and has voted against Vision on a number of key motions that she felt were wrong when it came to protection of free speech or to development. Four city neighbourhoods are getting the chance to develop new plans in the next few years, something she suggested and pushed for. Plus, she takes my calls even when she’s riding on her bike, talking as she pedals.

Bill McCreery. NPA. Bill is a bit stuck in the Vancouver of the 1970s, when he represented as a TEAM park-board commissioner, but he has demonstrated an unusual willingness to get out and debate planning issues with anyone who comes along. He also pitched in the last three years to work on rebuilding the party, along with Sean Bickerton. As someone who’s lived in the West End (though temporarily camped in Richmond with a partner), he’s one of many who have questioned Vision’s STIR projects in that area and he’s also recently called for a moratorium on laneway houses.

Raymond Louie. Vision. A slogger who specializes in the city’s finances and development issues. Been kinda quiet in this council, but still the go-to guy for money questions.

Heather Deal. Vision. Food carts, studio spaces for artists, the York Theatre and more have been her babies. This former David Suzuki Foundation house biologist has become the arts, culture and chow specialist.

Elizabeth Ball. NPA. She was never the strongest of the NPA councillors on the last council, but Ball has a long history in theatre in the city and she’s knowledgeable about the whole arts scene.

Kerry Jang. Vision. Much beloved by media in the city 🙂 for his propensity to say whatever he’s thinking about anything, Jang, a UBC psychiatry professor, spends time educating himself about his homelessness and mental health files. Then he passes it on to us. Always a learning experience.

Bill Yuen and Francis Wong from the NPA and RJ Aquino from COPE are three candidates some might want to consider because of their community experience. Bill has been a long-time community advocate and political organizer in Renfrew-Collingwood; Francis has been active in the Chinatown BIA; and RJ has done substantial work with the Filipino community.

A final note about park board.

I can’t see how anyone can not vote for John Coupar, for the NPA, after his heroic effort to save the Bloedel Conservatory. He strikes me as the kind of person ideally suited for the board – someone who cares passionately about whether the plants are being cared for at Queen Elizabeth Park, perhaps obsessively so, instead of whether he’s laying a good first stepping stone for his future political career.

Others who have demonstrated real interest in making the city’s parks and community centres better: Brent Granby, COPE, a long-time community advocate with West End Residents Association; Sarah Blyth, Vision, a champion for activities for young people during her last three years on the board; Constance Barnes, Vision, a Sun-Yat Sen Gardens  marketing manager who has brought her skills to the board; Dave Pasin, NPA, who has been on the board of the West End Community Centre and very active in this campaign on making suggestions about park improvements.

There seem to be a lot of promising newcomers here – Gabby Kalaw, Melissa De Genova, and Jason Upton from the NPA and Niki Sharma and Trevor Loke for Vision,  Donalda Greenwell-Baker for COPE, but I can’t sort them out, so you’ll have to do it.

Those who want to express their opposition to Vision’s handling of park-board finances could consider voting for the Green Party’s Stuart Mackinnon, who joined NPAer Ian Robertson in opposing the big cuts in 2009.

Peter Wall and Rob Macdonald are distinctive figures in this city, far-sighted developers and land-buyers who don’t hesitate to speak their mind.

They’ve done business together. Now they’re backing different candidates.

Political reporters live in the bubble, along with the politicians, bureacrats and campaigners they cover.

As well, we’re hampered by our tendency to hang around in our personal world with people who have similar political convictions.

So any sentient journalist likes to check out what the real people are thinking, outside those circles.

Here’s the poll among people who I like to rely on to get my reality-check take:

Hairdresser: He never tells me how he votes, but he does tell me trends among his west-side clients. In 2008, they were turned off Sam Sullivan and turned on to Gregor Robertson. This time, they’re off Robertson: bike lanes, wasting money, and a flake. So they’re giving money to Suzanne Anton, but they have doubts about her and whether they think she’ll make it.

Garden-maintenance crew. (Please, no comments about how bourgeois I am. I have no time to rake leaves when I’m doing the people’s work, bringing you information.)

Big big fan of cutie gregor. actually got to meet him at two recent events. we talked chickens and backyard gardening. very cool. to be honest i am not big into politics. just find it overwhelming and not knowledgeable enough. follow the usa elections more than any of our stuff. however robertson really got me intrested in civic stuff as i find this impacts us more directly than federal. likely silly thinking, but def intrested in what is going on around us- parks, bike routes, homeless etc. So yes the whole crew is voting and hoping for the best.

Dentist: Voted for Gregor Robertson last time, definitely not voting for him again. Didn’t mention Occupy Vancouver at all, but talked about the bike lanes and the chickens as something that really riled him.

Physio: Hardly ever votes and likely won’t this time. What she knows about the election: The mayor brought in chickens and bees. And she doesn’t like “that woman” running against him, can’t stand her voice and the constant attacks.

A union, usually left-voting relative: Doesn’t know anything about Vision other than that they put in the bike lanes and might tear down the viaducts. Will vote Vision because he doesn’t go downtown that much and doesn’t care. Plus “if you’re going to vote left, you have to eat a little granola.”

A good NPA-voting friend: Can’t imagine ever voting anything but NPA. However, he is going to vote for Tim Louis because he thinks it’s good to have a real attack dog on council.

That’s all for now, folks. More to come ….

Teaching statistics, math and polls to my journalism students this week, so I’ve got a wealth of material on my hands to use in class as examples of vague claims, misleading statistics, deceptive graphics, and other magical acts with numbers that the two major parties are performing.

Both parties have contributed. Vision started with a news conference Monday morning, aimed at kicking off a week themed “Don’t gamble on the NPA,” that outlined what the NPA’s campaign promises will cost.

Here’s the news release Vision issued on the wacky spending plans ($500 million in capital costs! $10 million in operating! A 5-per-cent tax increase!), which is missing some details. I’m copying them here below and they do provide a handy guide for what each party promised, if nothing else.

The problem with the Vision costing is that it jumbles up items that truly are new NPA promises and where there are hefty price tags attached (streetcar – $200 million; Vancouver Art Gallery gift – $40 million; restore 20 firefighter positions – $2.5 million; Red Tape Commissioner – $300,0oo; Vancouver Investment and Trade Authority: $300,000 and a few more) with items that Visionistas themselves have supported doing or that simply mean a re-ordering of priorities, as opposed to new money.

Many of the things in the list of capital items that Vision listed as NPA “promises” sound pretty necessary and worth doing to me: fixing pools, building cycle routes and greenways, developing sports hubs.

As well, since the capital priorities for the next three years are already set (you’re about to approve them when you vote Saturday), presumably these new items couldn’t be added anyway. They’d make good priorities for the next capital plan.

Louie said that the NPA might move push aside some of the items in this three-year capital plan to make room for their promises. Fine. But that’s not spending new money. That’s spending the same money but on different things.

Some were also items in Vision’s “promise” list, i.e. build 500 daycare spaces for $25 million. But Vision didn’t include that as part of the cost of their promises — apparently because they know where the money will come from, so they didn’t have to include it.

However, it’s unclear what the NPA plan are for funding those spaces, so the cost is included. Huh?

There was more like that.

Perhaps if Louie had had enough time, and reporters enough patience + math literacy, he could have made it sound understandable and plausible.

But the NPA’s math wingdingers don’t have that excuse. They’re just flat-out deliberately deceptive efforts to enrage the voting public, which the party seems to presume is really stupid about basic math. (They could be right, but always a mistake to count on voter dumbness.)

They try to shock over-burdened taxpayers by saying that taxes went up 15 per cent in three years, that city hall spending increased by $135 million over the three years overall, and that those profligate Visionistas increased spending on their own offices by 6 per cent.

As Mike Howell at the Courier pointed out, taxes under the NPA went up by 16 per cent in the previous three years.

As I point out, a 6-per-cent increase in office costs is barely over inflation. (According to CPI figures obtained from BC Stats, the B.C. ‘s consumer-price-index, aka inflation rate was 2.4 per cent in the past year, 1.3 per cent the previous year, and zero for 2008-2009.) A $135-million increase on a budget that started at $894 million doesn’t even keep up with population increase plus inflation. Around 40,000 people moved into Vancouver in the past three years, a six-per-cent increase. And for both increases, a big part was driven by a contract settled by the previous NPA administration that had 4-per-cent annual salary hikes.

The NPA’s statement in its release (the one with the stupid cartoons and the Take Back Vancouver campaign) also said it left Vision with $420 million in cash reserves that it could have used to keep taxes low. As the party well knows, Suzanne Anton would have howled like crazy if Vision had used reserve money — it’s set aside for special purposes.

But probably the most egregious example, one I showed my students today, was the bar graph on homeless statistics. It could easily be used as an illustration for the book “How to Lie With Statistics” (one of my favourites) when it is re-issued some day.

When you look at the graph (page 15 of the NPA’s platform, which can be found on their website), it’s constructed to look as those homelessness has doubled in the city. They did that by making the two bars start at the 1550 mark and then stretching out the 10-person increments to make it appear that a 25-person increase was enormous. (Of course, I’m not even addressing the fact that the graph compares the statistics from 2008 to 2011, which show an increase, and not the stats from 2010 to 2011, which show a decrease.)

For those who just can’t enough of this policy-drone stuff, please continue on for the items in Vision’s cost comparison and my comments.

[Read more →]

My weekend story about the history of this campaign, that started with casinos and chickens.

And a side story with thumbnail sketches of the issues being ignored.

And we thought this election would be boring. We’re down to the last nasty week now, with calls pouring in to newsrooms about how awful this or that party/candidate has been.

And more polls. There’s the Forum poll out this morning, which many of us on this blog were robo-called on, suggesting that Robertson and Anton are relatively close. (I don’t have it or a link to it yet, but when I do, I’ll put it up.)

There’s an Angus Reid poll out, suggesting people are sick of the Occupy Vancouver camp but that they’re not about to base their vote on that. Their numbers are Robertson: 47; Anton 27.

And some fun stuff about how people rate each of the candidates on various qualities. Read for yourself below.

KEY FINDINGS

Ø 29% have a favourable opinion of Occupy Vancouver; 64% have an unfavourable opinion

Ø 39% would set a deadline for the Occupy Vancouver protesters to vacate the lawn of the Art Gallery; 36% would seek legal action to remove the protesters; 15% would take no action and allow the protest to continue indefinitely

[VANCOUVER – Nov. 14, 2011] – Most people in the City of Vancouver hold negative views on the Occupy Vancouver protest, and three-in-four are calling for either legal action or a deadline in order to vacate the lawn of the Art Gallery, a new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll has found.

In the online survey of a representative sample of 402 adult City of Vancouver residents, only 29 per cent of respondents say they have a favourable opinion of the Occupy Vancouver protest, while 64 per cent hold an unfavourable opinion.

In addition, 39 per cent of respondents think it is time to set a deadline for the Occupy Vancouver protesters to vacate the lawn of the Art Gallery, while just over a third (36%) would prefer to seek legal action to remove the Occupy Vancouver protesters. Only 15 per cent of Vancouverites would allow the protest to continue indefinitely.

Two-thirds of respondents (66%) say that, if a member of the Occupy Vancouver protest were running for office in the municipal election, they would not consider voting for this person.

State of Affairs in Vancouver

Respondents were asked to rate the way the current municipal government has dealt with 12 issues. The city gets a positive review on six of them, showing the highest level of satisfaction for providing good sanitation services (77% say it has done a “very good job” or a “good job”), protecting the environment

(62%), having designated bike lanes (62%), promoting tourism to Vancouver (57%), ensuring public safety (53%), and fostering artistic and cultural activities (53%).

About two in-five Vancouverites say the current municipal government has done a good job in allowing homeowners to keep hens in backyard coops (45%), enhancing their overall quality of life (44%) and dealing with homelessness and poverty (38%). The lowest ranked issues are handling the Occupy Vancouver protests (35%), dealing with the Olympic Village situation (29%), and implementing policies to help small businesses (27%).

A quadrant analysis—which takes into account the level of satisfaction with each issue and the level of stated importance from respondents—looks at the topics that could become key vote drivers in the Nov. 19 municipal election.

Overall, the municipal government gets high marks on three issues that are particularly important to voters: sanitation services, the environment and public safety. The city also gets a positive review on three topics that are evidently not as important at this point: tourism, bike lanes and cultural activities.

Conversely, there are three important areas where the municipal government is facing criticism: enhancing quality of life, homelessness and helping small businesses. Two other topics are nearing this quadrant as the election looms: Occupy Vancouver and the Olympic Village situation.

Mayoral Candidate Traits

Respondents to this survey were asked to select up to six words that may describe the two main mayoral candidates in Vancouver. The results of this question are:

Gregor Robertson – Intelligent (43%), arrogant (32%), out of touch (30%), down to earth (30%), compassionate (28%), inefficient (27%)

Suzanne Anton – Arrogant (32%), out of touch (30%), intelligent (27%), boring (23%), strong (20%), uncaring (18%)

Both candidates have intelligence as one of their key characteristics, but Robertson manages a good score on two other positive traits—down to earth and compassionate—while Anton does so in only one: strong.

When asked about their preferred outcome in the municipal election, one-in-five Vancouverites (26%) are uncertain. Almost half of respondents would like to see Robertson as mayor with either a Vision Vancouver majority (29%) or no majority (18%) in council. Conversely, 27 per cent of respondents would prefer to have Anton as mayor with no majority (9%) or with a Non-Partisan Association (NPA) majority in council (18%).

Analysis

The group that claims to represent the “99 per cent” is now currently seen in a favourable light by just 29 per cent of Vancouverites. Most respondents in the city are calling for an end to the occupation, either through legal action or after establishing a deadline. However, while Occupy Vancouver has gained prominence as an issue in the context of the municipal election, it still trails other topics that are more important to would-be voters, such as sanitation, public safety, quality of life and the environment.

The two mayoral candidates are connecting well with their base of support, with Robertson getting high marks on character traits from women and respondents aged 18-to-34, and Anton getting her best numbers from respondents over the age of 55. Still, one-in-four Vancouverites do not have a preferred outcome in the election, suggesting that—as was the case three years ago—turnout will play a key role in the final result.

Heading into the last crazy week of this strange election, I am being reminded by various tweets, blogs and news reports of the inaccurate perceptions that are often perpetrated in civic-election reporting.

In the spirit of contributing to better reporting all around, here’s my list of stories/analyses/assumptions we should all avoid.

1. “A large turnout is expected after heavy voting at advance polls.” Voting has been shifting more and more to advance polls in all elections and does not mean there will be a large turnout. Election teams are pushing their committed supporters to going to advance polls so they can spread out their workload and not try to do everything on E-Day. And voters are starting to vote in elections the way they go to Shopper’s Drug Mart: at all hours of the day and night.

2. “The east-west divide in Vancouver civic elections.” As I said in my previous blog post, the campaign experts know the divide is not east-west with Main as the boundary. It’s north-south, with 16th in the west and Kingsway in the east where the real division is. The NPA tends to pull solidly all along the south, except for Marpole, and especially in the southeast.

3. “The XXX scandal/issue/crisis determined the outcome of the election.” (For XXX, substitute Olympic Village, Occupy Vancouver or whatever else you like.)

The majority of people, about two-thirds, vote on long-term values. Long-time NPA voters are never going to vote for Vision or COPE even if those parties adopted the economic policies of Milton Friedman whole-heartedly. Long-time COPE/Vision/left supporters are never going to vote NPA even if the NPA decided to mandate bicycle-riding chickens in every solar-powered community garden. In both cases, it’s not their club.

The middle third of voters, those who frequently don’t understand political ideology enough align themselves one way or another, tend to swing back and forth. But even they have certain long-term values and other indicators that guide them, more than just the latest crisis.

A brilliant article in last Sunday’s New York Times magazine analyzed the respective chances of the various presidential candidates and calculated them using the factors that tend to have the most influence: 1. How well the economy is doing 2. How well the presidential candidate was polling a year before the election 3. How far from the centre the candidate seems to be in comparison with his opponent.

A major scandal — and I’m talking major, i.e. sex with children; criminal behaviour of other sorts; inconvertible proof of major fraud or corruption — can have an impact on top of that. But it has to be more than just “she’s a wimp” or “he’s a dimwit.”

4. Please feel free to add your own.

Bogus alert: This is a pretty unscientific assessment of the signs, but it’s one rigorous step up from just by impressions or guesses. And it gave me something to do besides clean my house on Saturday.

I thought about doing this a couple of weeks ago because I’ve been noticing a lot of NPA signs on the east side, along Broadway and 12th from Main to Boundary, in the northeast corner around Nanaimo (especially for Joe Carangi), and along 49th Main to Fraser. Also, it looked to me as though Cambie, where I drive frequently, was going about 2/3 to 4/5 NPA.

These weren’t itemized counts but just something that was hitting me as I was driving along usual routes through the city.

So, in true poli nerd fashion, I decided to spend an hour of my day today doing an actual count that I thought would be somewhat more representative of the whole city. I was coming back from North Van, so mapped out a giant rectangle of the city.

Political junkies know that voting in Vancouver tends to split, not east-west, as everyone assumes, but more along 16th/Kingsway. North of there is more lefty land (Vision/COPE), except for one pocket in the downtown in Yaletown. South of that line tends to go more NPA, except for some pockets around the Punjabi Village and Marpole.

Epicentres of the Left: Commercial Drive, Mount Pleasant, West End. Epicentres of the Right: Shaughnessy, Kerrisdale, Dunbar.

Signs are a not-bad thing to count, as people who take signs are usually committed voters.

So this is the route I chose: Rupert from First to 63rd, which I thought would be split about evenly, since Kingsway crosses at 38th. Then across the city east-west on 54th, 57th and, after Ontario, 49th and then Southwest Marine. Down Dunbar from Marine to 10th. Across the city west-east on 10th and then 12th, along 16th Burrard to Main, where it’s more residential and had more chance of lawn signs and then back out along 12th from Main to my starting point on Rupert.

There are all kinds of problems with this, obviously. Doesn’t take in VV strongholds in West End, Kits, Marpole, Punjabi Village. (In fact, I chose 54th to avoid Punjabi Village as I thought that would skew the results too much.) May have missed southwest streets that are more sign-happy than 49th, SW Marine and Dunbar. (I thought they would have lots but they didn’t.)

Here’s what I found:

The place where Vision/COPE was the most dominant was along Rupert, especially from 1st to 45th. In fact, it was a veritable sign festival along that street, with a total of 55 signs for Vision, 11 for COPE and 3 yards with both. The NPA’s candidates had only 21 signs and 10 of those were in the 45th-62nd stretch. (By the way, would really love to talk to the homeowner at Rupert and 3rd? or so who has both a Gregor and a Suzanne sign on the lawn.)

The area where the NPA was strongest was, predictably, 49th west of Ontario all the way out to Dunbar and then down Dunbar.

Randy Helten and the Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver had three signs in that same area. Sandy Garossino had one on 16th near Granville. And someone named Michael Darni had a cluster in Fraserview.

The actual counts on the four sides of the rectangle:

Rupert: 55 Vision; 11 COPE; 3 Vision and COPE together; 21 NPA

54/57/49/SW Marine: 39 NPA; 23 Vision; 3 COPE; 2 NSV; 5 Dharni

Dunbar: 12 NPA; 4 Vision; 3; COPE; 1 NSV

10th/12th/16th/12th/Grandview: 32 Vision; 4 COPE; 7 Vision and COPE together; 18 NPA

Other fun facts

– Apparently anyone building a house is pro-NPA. I spotted several signs on houses under construction. Only Vision sign on a building project was the Vancity-financed multi-unit something at Grandview and Nanaimo.

– Community gardens, or at least the one at Oak and 16th, really REALLY love Gregor Robertson. Looked like a sign for every plot there.

– My rules were: Each lot got counted as one sign, even if the person had multiple signs plastered all over the place, unless they had a sign each from an opposing party. (Therefore,the guy at Rupert and 3rd who had one Vision and one NPA sign resulted in a tick mark in each column.)

I didn’t count which candidates’ signs were the most prominent for each party. I was marking this down as I was driving, folks!

Please feel free to post your own results for various streets that you think are representative!!

Poll stories are tricky, especially when those polls are coming from political parties rather than pollsters operating completely independently.

So what to think about the NPA poll splashed across the front page of the Sun today that says the NPA’s Suzanne Anton is closing the gap between her and Vision’s Gregor Robertson?

Here are my thoughts on what it means.

1. I have no doubt that the Occupy Vancouver situation is having an impact on voting choices for some city residents and that Suzanne Anton’s numbers have improved at various points since the camp started. There’s been heavy media coverage of the Occupy camp and a lot of negative public reaction to it. As well, the poll doesn’t seem that far off what I’ve been hearing all along about how many NPA council candidates might get elected. It says “on track for four,” — a little higher than the two or three I’ve been hearing, but not completely out of whack.

2. I have to wonder about the order of the poll’s questions.

Polling experts have always told me that a pollster should never ask any question before the one about voter intention, because it can have the effect of skewing the vote as you “prime” the pollee to think about a certain topic before answering. I understand the first question this poll asked was something like, “Do you think life in Vancouver is better or worse?” That’s a priming question that could have had an impact.

It also looks as though there was a second question before “who would you vote for,” with questions about whether the Vision administration has done a good or poor job and should be replaced. The first two questions in that set are the negative option (it should be replaced) and the second two are the positive. Again, seems like priming. CORRECTION: Jeff Lee posted the order of the poll questions after I wrote this. This second question was NOT asked before “who would you vote for.”

3. The polling that was released was done Nov. 3-5. Those were the three days with the most negative news about Occupy Vancouver. On Nov. 3, there was a non-fatal drug overdose. On Nov. 5, a young woman was found dead. That had to have affected people’s responses about OV and about the mayoral candidates. (I know from covering other campaigns that polling is often done on a daily basis so that parties can see the trends, not just a snapshot. If the NPA is doing rolling polls, it could have chosen the three worst days in order to highlight the most positive numbers for the party.)

4. Hamish Marshall, the pollster who did this, says the results are weighted to the last provincial election. I’d be curious to know what that means. BTW, Hamish used to be at Angus Reid and is a very experienced pollster, one whom I’ve relied on in the past.

5. The margin of error for the city sectors is very high, especially for the downtown region, where it’s 9 per cent. That’s an area with a lot of renters, a lot of disaffected Vision voters who may go for Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver or stay home.

There are other things I could pick away at but I’ll leave it at that for now, except to say that I’ve done my own share of news stories about internal polls from parties that I’ve been criticized for. My hands are not clean on this issue and I’m not attacking my buddy, Jeff Lee, at the Sun. Just raising some thinking points.

In fact, I was trying to get this poll as well for weeks, but there was some kind of miscommunication between me and Norm Stowe at the NPA and Jeff got it instead of me. (Here it is, by the way, so you can do your own analysis.)

I did notice, though, that onetime Conservative strategist and commentator Norm Spector was critical of the Sun for running this internal poll all over its front page, a week before the election.